The Travel Committee received 61 sponsorship requests (13 more than the last year). The information has been cross-checked (speakers, GSoC students and mentors, travel costs, arrival dates, etc.) and now we are working on the accommodation costs.

Statitics

7

Females

54

Males

18

Speakers

11

Google Summer of Code students

6

Google Summer of Code mentors

39

Members of GNOME Foundation (4 GSoC students)

7

Requested only accommodation

5

Requested only travel fare

In total, we were requested US$49,578.- for travel fares. However, we will not sponsor the train from Amsterdam (Schiphol) to Den Haag because it costs €7,60 (one-way) and we think it is an affordable amount of money. Hence, we can save €15,2 per every travel request (~US$1,100.-), which might help us to sponsor more people.

Having that in consideration plus better airfares we were able to find, we would need US$41,738.- instead of US$49,578.-

On the other hand, we would need around 28 double rooms. However, the accommodation costs this year are higher than the costs when the bid was presented. It would not be a big deal for 1 or 2 people, but it is different when you are booking for 55 people (5/6 nights each).

We are happy to announce the Travel Committee is ready to receive applications for sponsorships to attend to GUADEC 2010. This year, GUADEC is being held in the The Hague University, in The Hague, Netherlands, from Monday 26th July, until Friday 30th July.

Any information you send to the Travel Committee will be private. Asking for sponsorship does not guarantee you will get sponsored.

A good application with good information will be processed faster.

If you need help with accommodation, the Travel Committee will book the hotel or hostel for you. This enables us to get group rates and provide accommodation assistance to the most people possible.You should state that you need accommodation, and leave the cost blank.

Always choose the most economical option whenever possible. People who need travel sponsorship, should look for the best price (i.e. through a service like kayak.com). If the Travel Committee finds a cheaper price, that will be the price considered during the evaluation.

If you are applying to a Google Summer of Code program (as student or mentor) you should mention it in your application. Preference will be given to students and mentors participating in the Google Summer of Code or the Outreach Program for Women.GSoC students usually get a percentage of their GUADEC expenses covered.

If you submitted an abstract to be presented at GUADEC, you should mention it in your application. Preference will be given to people giving presentations at GUADEC.The GUADEC paper committee will let the travel committee know which talks have been accepted, so as long as you let us know you submitted one, there is no need to follow up.

The Travel committee should reply back about receiving your application within 2-3 days. After that we would accumulate all the sponsorship requests and process them together. So please do not panic (have any butterflies in your stomach) if we take some time to reply on the status. Affirmative/Negative you would surely get a response.

Finally, the Travel Committee has replied to every request for sponsorship received (positives and negatives). So, if you have not received an email from us yet, do not hesitate in get in touch with us through the email or irc (#travel).

Sculpture of Juan Gantes masked (as Moonlight Mask :-)

We have booked 16 apartments at Catalina Park, which looks nice, in a good location and still austere. We were told they will enable a special room for attendants to the conference. The process of booking took more time than expected, but thanks to Jorge Bustos and Chema Casanova (who gave us a hand from Spain) it was possible to accelerate it.

We tried to sponsor as much contributors as possible, however it was not possible to sponsor everybody.

At the end, we received 51 applications, 3 of them arrived a bit later and other 3 very later. We have assigned assistantship to 43 people (travel and/or accommodation).

The Travel Committee is expected to reply every request for sponsorship in the next two weeks after the deadline. Because the original deadline was April 27, people who applied for sponsorship are worried because they do not have received any email coming from us yet (neither positive or negative).

Aserrín (Sawdust)

So, this is just an update of the GUADEC sponsorship process in order to let the people know in which part of the process we are. So, if you are waiting news from us, do not get nervous.

On Thursday 7, we replied to the sponsorship requests of the first group of people. This group was composed by people who have a work (talk) accepted to be presented at GUADEC. It was possible because it was a small group and we were sure we could cover their costs (mostly).

Besides, the Travel Committee is taking care of the accommodations. It let us to reduce and keep under control the costs, hence, we can support more people. And it will depend of the final place how many people we will be able to sponsor. We are delayed because the booking process has been slower than we expected. But we are working on it.

But I let you know we are prioritizing mainly as following: speakers (core, cross-desktop, normal, bof, lightning talk), foundation members, summer of code students, other people. There are other factors, such as, give the chance to people who were not sponsored the last year or people.

One thing is sure: if you were sponsored, you will not stay at Hotel Fataga. It is one of the most expensive hotels in the list and it is only our last resort.

The Travel Committee has received 48 sponsorship requests and we have started to processing them. It will be a bit hard, as you may guess and as you may deduce according the following tables:

General statitics

5

Females

43

Males

19

Speakers (not confirmed yet)

8

Google Summer of Code students

30

Members of GNOME Foundation

1

Applicant declined his request

Requests and funds (in US dollars)

Minimum requested:

$ 59,038.-

Maximum requested:

$ 61,101.-

Funds available for sponsoships:

$ 30,000.-

The amount requested should be a bit higher than it is shown in the second table, because we need to get some clarification from some people. However, I am confident we could save at least $ 9,000 if we look for a different lodging than the main one recommended by the organizers.

Sooner than later we should send emails asking for more information (when it were needed). We will do our best.

To everybody who have sent an application for travel & accomodation sponsorship:

If you did it before than April 27 02:00 UTC, I have sent an acknowledgment (email) confirming we (the Travel Committee) have received your request. If you have not received any acknowledgment coming from me, you should re-send your application.

The Travel Committee is receiving applications for travel sponsorship requests for the next GUADEC which will be held in Gran Canaria. The deadline is April 27, 2009, 19:00 UTC. Do no wait until the very last minute.

Read carefully the instructions and the proccess at the Travel’s page.

Passing from 5.8 MiB to 1.8 MiB, through deleting all those items whose files does not exists, seems a bit gain. I wanted to go a bit further and I wondered ¿How many recent files does an application really need? (sorry, not that futher :-) I do not think more than 10, but let me know if I am wrong.

I wrote my own version of <a href=”http://www.gnome.org/~csaavedra/news-2008-03.html#D23″>Claudio’s program</a> with considering that matter. And my ~/.recently-used.xbel file went from 1.2 MiB to 54 KiB. Before to go to the script, let me show the numbers I got in a computer with less than two month of non intensive use:

When I load Eog, it only show me the last 5 files I opened before. Why does it need 1146 extra items stored?

Nevermind. The <a href=”http://www.gnome.org/~gpoo/bag/clean-recently-used.py”>script</a> I wrote is simple. It delete the files that does not exists (the same strategy as Claudio’s program), but it also delete the files that are not so recently used, and I got the following numbers: